The 'Big Data' service Infochimps now offers IP geolocation from Digital Element. Infochimps is best known for making huge datasets available as bulk downloads and through RESTful APIs. Digital Element has traditionally offered enterprise level services to large companies like AOL, CNN, and Ask.Com. Both companies hope that the Infochimps RESTful API interface and aggressive entry pricing will entice smaller companies to use the service.

Today at Where 2.0 Yahoo announced the release of Placemaker, a new "geo-enrichment" platform. The freely-available platform, which includes an API (our Placemaker API Profile), enables developers and publishers to make applications and data sets location-aware by determining the "whereness" of unstructured content (such as blog posts, new articles, feeds, and web pages).

Developers have requested that Google better align the Places API and Google Maps search results. Google has answered the call by integrating the Places API with Google Maps search. The move offers better search quality, but developers need be aware the changes may affect current installations.

The WebCargo Domain Check API (also referred to as the Domain Availabily API) allows you to deeply probe a domains availability. The RESTful API also uses multiple methods to check an email addresses...